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18 May 2016

Unlearning in Behavioral Science

Recently I came across various
materials* which state that many of the things I learned in grad-school at
Erasmus University aren’t as I’ve learned them. Among them are the bodies of
knowledge on choice overload, priming, ego-depletion etc. (Just as a note,
Erasmus Research Institute of Management is in top 3 European research
institutes in its field, so I got top level education from highly qualified
professors.)

Nowadays, there is serious doubt
casted upon ego-depletion, studies on priming have been challenged on a wide
scale, apparently, choice overload doesn’t manifest each and every time and, it
seems that, the endowment effect doesn’t manifest in isolated groups of
hunter-gatherers, which means that it is not an innate (evolved) human feature.

It looks like I have to unlearn
many of the things I have learned.

That’s interesting.

Yet, I can’t simply delete from
memory knowledge (information) on ego-depletion (just as an example). Even if I
could delete information from my memory, in the case of priming there is no
clear list or criterion on which results hold and which don’t.

The situation isn’t as grim as it
seems at first glance, particularly for the applied part of behavioral science.

The fact that not every result
found in a scientific study (lab or field) doesn’t hold in different contexts
is not exactly news. Moreover, people who profoundly understand behavioral
science know that there are some strong and some weak phenomena. For example,
we know that loss aversion and mental accounting are strong phenomena and we
also know / knew that priming is a
weak one.

When doing applied behavioral
science work, you want to rely on the strong phenomena. Sure, you can use
weaker ones such as priming, but you can’t rely on them.

For example, when designing an
intervention intended to keep a space clean, it is essential to rely on
convenience of trash-cans and social proof (social imitation – more broadly).
Yes, you can dispense a citrus scent (olfactory priming) to promote cleanness,
but that is more of an add-on and not the core of the intervention.

We knew that priming studies aren’t
exactly at the top of reliability and replicability, but most behavioral
science specialists have learned about ego-depletion
and many (most?) took it as a given.

Apparently it is not.

However, this doesn’t bring huge
changes to applied behavioral science work. The most important practical learning
from the entire body of knowledge on self-control and ego-depletion is:

Design is more powerful than
self-control

And it holds true.

Maybe the self-control issues that
we face are not due to ego-depletion; they could be due to fatigue,
forgetfulness, lack of (availability of) attention etc. Yet, how we solve them
remains unchanged.

The fact that choice overload doesn’t manifest every time and failures of choice architecture aren’t exactly
news, either.

Choice architecture works ONLY when
there is no clear pre-existing preference (i.e. the chooser faces ambiguity).

Fewer options to choose from is
simply easier for the consumer (chooser), but choice is about a lot more than
being simple to choose.

Take the example of Total Wine
shop(s). This is what they say on their “about” page:

Our typical store carries more than 8,000 different wines from every
wine-producing region in the world, including more than 2,000 wines not
available in any other store. (source)

Through the lenses of choice
overload 8000 different wines sounds crazy. According to the choice overload principle they should
have went out of business a long time ago. Here are a few explanations why
they’re still doing well.

First, when wanting to be “the
place to go to for wines”, you need to have lots of wines.

Second, many wine enthusiasts seek
variety and want to explore. (Others simply want to get drunk and probably have
an existing preference for the wine with the best alcohol/ price ratio).

Third, a wine bottle is a
low-impact purchase. If you buy something you don’t like it’s just a few (more)
dollars spent for an interesting* experience.

*interesting is a word used when
you don’t like something and either you don’t admit it or you don’t want to say
it out-loud.

For full fairness, Total wine uses
choice architecture and offers a lot of structured choice.

Just as a rhetorical question:

Why do we put choices about houses,
retirement plans in the same category with ones about jams, wine and coffee?

This, however, is another story.

Coming back to the applied part of
behavioral science: We have to test if our interventions work or not, thus we
can assess in each particular case how the number of choices offered influences
the outcome.

When doing applied behavioral
science we have to take into account the bigger picture.

For example, if in a coffee shop
reframes the “bring your own cup” discount into a surcharge for paper-cups
behavior shifts towards the desired direction: fewer paper cups used. However,
it may also lead to a decrease in clients who simply don’t like the idea of
paying explicitly for paper cups, even if the total price is the same as at the
coffee shop across the street where the paper cup is included.

Moreover, clients who intended, but forgot to
bring their own cup will feel bad (due to loss aversion) for having to pay for
a paper cup. Moreover, they will experience regret, which is one of those emotions
you don’t want to have associated with your business.

One of the beauties of science is
that it evolves and if we are to be professionals in a field of (applied)
science we need to keep up with it and, occasionally, unlearn things.

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Nick NAUMOF

Nick Naumof has studied people from different scientific perspectives ranging from economics to consumer behavior, behavioral economics and evolutionary psychology.
Author of “It Makes (No) Sense – In Between the Joy of Gaining and the Fear of Losing”, Nick Naumof has a unique mix of skills that allow him to translate the academic insights of behavioral science into practical applications in business and service design.
With more than seven years’ experience in developing and delivering workshops and training programs, Nick Naumof offers highly engaging and intriguing learning experiences.